Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, (born March 1, 1848, Dublin, Ireland—died Aug. 3, 1907, Cornish, New Hampshire, U.S.), generally acknowledged to be the foremost American sculptor of the late 19th century, noted for his evocative memorial statues and for the subtle modeling of his low reliefs.

Saint-Gaudens was born to a French father and an Irish mother. His family moved to New York City when he was an infant and at age 13 he was apprenticed to a cameo cutter. He earned his living at this craft, while studying at night at Cooper Union (1861–65) and the National Academy of Design (1865–66) in New York. In 1867 he traveled to Paris and was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts. Along with Olin Levi Warner and Howard Roberts, Saint-Gaudens was one of the first Americans to study sculpture in Paris. Late in 1870 he set out for Rome, where, still supporting himself by cameo cutting, he worked for two years copying famous antique statues on commission. He also started to create his first imaginative compositions during this period.

After 1875 Saint-Gaudens settled in New York, where he befriended and collaborated with a circle of men who formed the nucleus of an American artistic renaissance: the group included the architects Henry Hobson Richardson, Stanford White, and Charles Follen McKim and the painter John La Farge. The most important work of Saint-Gaudens’s early career was the monument to Admiral David Farragut (1880, Madison Square Garden, New York), the base of which was designed by White.

Saint-Gaudens also made many medallions, originally as a diversion from more serious tasks. These works show the influence of Renaissance medals as well as his early cameos. Among them are designs for U.S. coins (the head on the $10 gold piece of 1906 and the $20 gold piece of 1907) and a considerable number of portraits. His autobiography, The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was published in 1913.